


Kankri Performs His Most Solemn Duty -  Era of Benevolent Rationality

by RainofLittleFishes



Series: The Era of Benevolent Rationality [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternia, Alternian medical technology, Auspisticism, BellCurveBent, Era of Benevolent Rationality, Grief/Mourning, Hemospectrum Shift, Kismesissitude, Matespritship, OCs - Freeform, Original Troll Characters, Oviparous Trolls, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Slice of Life, Troll Anatomy, Troll Culture, Troll Government in Any Incarnation is Entirely too Involved in its Citizens’ Reproductive Processes, Vignette, aftermath of war, hand-waved sciencification, ooc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 10:14:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1854286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the 60th Sweep of the Era of Benevolent Rationality, Kankri Maryam, of the Reproductive Research and Development Office’s Practical Applications Practice Department, performs his most solemn duty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kankri Performs His Most Solemn Duty -  Era of Benevolent Rationality

Of all your duties, this is the most solemn.

It is midday as you enter the Church of Death closest to the city’s spaceport. You pass two sets of doors before shucking the head covering of your sun-protective flexiarmor, and you don’t slow down. You descend the stairs to the left at a swift pace and pull off and step out of the rest of the armor in the demi-wardrobium of the morguary. You pick your double insulated sunbeetle leather case back up and turn. You know the priestess on duty, and know her to be an adherent of the Divine Music of the Spheres. She silently nods to you. You cross the room to her, and to the body on the table.

Your name is Kankri Maryam, and your job usually entails life, in all its messy and uncomfortable glory. This day you are here to wrestle a small victory from death.

You snap open your case, wash your hands, and glove up while the priestess pulls the sheet off and re-sterilizes the abdomen down to the nook. There are a series of blackened holes through the body’s upper torso, and wounds on the right arm taken in defense and not attack. The deceased’s face, broad planes, young with just a few laugh lines and the sun-squint of alien stars, is untouched. The meat of their body is clearly dead, but their carved and polished horns are still pristine. They were two sweeps your senior at their death. They will never grow old now.

You pop open a sterilized set of blades and swiftly score the thin flexible outermost chitin before cutting deeper. You spread open the slabs of muscle and skin and she holds them in place, claws delicately piercing them to be sure they don’t slip. Regrettably, you have had a great deal of experience and this will only take a few minutes.

Everything else is soft tissue and you switch blades, cut, and pin the next layers. It would not be impossible for one of the Church of Death clergy to perform this service, but there are aspects of the rest of the business that are best dealt with by someone who knows their way through the system.

You examine the newly revealed genetic repository with its modest pool of unexpressed slurry. It doesn’t look to have gone bad yet, despite the three perigees that have passed since death, and the cryo between. You plug in a small cluster of decanting worms, already attached to labeled and numbered vials, and switch them out as the first batch fills. You will need to test each, especially the second batch, but it is better to be thorough now.

You pull out the second batch and nod to the priestess. She gently returns the flaps of flesh to their place and draws the sheet back up. She washes her naked hands and traces of brown blood spiral down the drain.

You change gloves and pinch the decanting worms off of the vials, add the time of collection, wrap them and store the vials in the fridge used for this purpose.

There are tiny sticky notes inside the fridge where one of the clergy or adherents labeled each and every shelf: “Territory of Tropical Storm Kankri & Multitudinous Minions. Do NOT. DO NOT, store your snacks or specimens here.” Each flag has a different threat or enforcement of this dictate, escalating to the ridiculous, all in different sets of handwriting. It’s a small sign of metaphorical warmth in a room that is by necessity kept cold.

None of the decanting worms exhibits an abnormal reaction. You pop each one into a separate section of the annelyzer and wait for results. A soft chime, the loudest noise so far, returns an “all clear” in just a few minutes.

You shuck the second pair of gloves, nod to the body on the table to which you have performed one final indignity, and the priestess gestures you to follow as she leaves through the far door and passes down a hallway to a far door, one of the church’s small sanctuarii.

She parts ways, still silent, with another nod and a touch to her forehead and heart. It once made you uncomfortable to receive a Sufferist salute, but you return it in the spirit it was given. The Church of Death’s central tenet is that All Are Equal in Death. You do not disagree. You are merely more interested in the living.

She leaves to prepare the body for whatever comes next. She may be winding it in cloth for burning, seeding it with a memory tree-egg, removing the heart for consumption by the grieving, or any number of things. Knowing what the final arrangements are would give you some further idea of what the situation is, but it is not, strictly speaking, your business.

You enter the room and are left with the grieving trolls in the sanctuarium.

Some would consider that the troll on the table in the morguary, who died young on a distant planet in the line of duty to the Benevolent Rationality, was lucky. There is a full clade and a few inclade in the room.

You don’t have much patience for the glory or romance of conquest, with its waste of potential and its irreverent shredding of both the trolls on duty and those left behind. You doubt the natives think much of it either.

You will let others argue over the Rationality’s future expansion or collapse. You will not think on all the problems that could be solved on planet with the budget that goes into such things or the problems that get tracked back.

Trolls have very aggressive and flexible immune systems, a necessity for anything Alternian-hatched, and the alien virus, bacterium, fungus, or parasite that can do more than make them grouchy is rare. (Some would argue that being grouchy is a preexisting condition rightfully earned by anything that has survived Alternia, even in this age.)

You still wake some days with the certainty that the next Scintilla Berry Fever has already crept in and is only bidding it’s time. You post such potential threat queries, detection protocols that still fall outside the budget, as hypotheticals only, and only to the most obscure RRDO boards.

Trolls are often fiercely private but also terrible gossips given the right opportunity, and you moderate a board for unsolved RRDO anomalies in the hope of early detection that you also hope will never come. You pay special attention to the postings coming from the colonies, where Alternian culture evolves fastest, and where the next dangerous unknown is likely to originate.

The jade troll huddled alone on the far wall was the deceased’s moirail, and highly enough placed on their ship that they were able to get the body into cryo and returned to Alternia instead of more convenient disposal. The brief forwarded to you by the administerror of this church didn’t specify if they witnessed their moirail’s violent death. You don’t like how they’re digging their claws into their arms or the slow rock that knocks their horns against the stone wall. The short attached files indicated that they have at least the next three perigees off while the ship does basic ferry runs, and you are not sure that that is a kindness.

There are many ways grief creeps, and screams, and oozes out, but you are wary that what took the Brown is not yet done. The other trolls in the room are taking comfort from one another. This one is alone. Hopefully the results of this meeting will give them something to focus on long enough for the pain to dull. Depending how this goes, you may drop a hint to someone to be sure the Jade has some form of support. It would need to be done off record. It would be a source of the greatest shame for a Jade or Teal to be culled. But. Their greatest form of support lies cold on a table a few rooms over. There is a low subsonic keen through the room. It crackles with each impact of horn and stone.

There are two trolls to the other side of the room, the deceased’s auspistice and their conciliated leaf, both shipmates. The Green leaf, a sweepmate, looks stunned and shaky. The auspistice, a Yellow, has his wrist wrapped in the shackle of their left hand. Their right tenses and flexes like they’re searching for another wrist.

The four trolls in the middle of the room are the deceased’s matesprit and kismesis, and their respective moirails.

The slim younger teal matesprit, another sweepmate, has unshed tears in their eyes, and is from on planet, still in training, as is their solemn blue moirail.

The much older kismesis, an imposing Blue very close to indigo, huge, scarred, face carefully blank, has requested a moratuarium of duty. Their Green moirail is on leave from a colony posting. Their hands are intertwined.

The deceased was precocious and will be missed, for all the good it did them.

Every single other troll in the room has contributed to the fees to the state for postmortem slurry extraction and for the fertilization to produce at least one grub. They have not specified if it will be combined before fertilization, or who will carry, or if they will contract a state or independent brooder instead. There is more money in escrow for either tyrian intervention, or contribution to the brooder’s living expenses or contract. Should they need the former, there may not be much left for the latter. Fortunately for them, should they need help and convince you that they are capable, you have an in with the only tyrian on the continent. This will remain your secret unless it becomes relevant. Hopefully it will not.

Beyond the initial fees, the details, of which there are many, remain to be determined.

Most trolls would consider it shameful to express grief in front of a stranger, even at this time. You are still very much a stranger. You are careful not to draw attention to their obvious tells. You do not express your condolences. You do not address the Teal’s unshed tears or the Jade’s unraveling. Not yet. The coming meeting will be stressful enough determining who wants or expects what, who will brood the grub or grubs, how they will manage caretaking or custody.

“Greetings,” you begin, deliberately underlying your words with a subtle authoritarian rumble, the reassurance pitches even more subtle. It has taken some practice, when you are half the size of most adult trolls, but whatever your failings, you are very, very good at what you do.

“I am Kankri Maryam, of the Reproductive Research and Development Office’s Practical Applications Practice Department. It appears that the slurry is likely viable, but only for internal brooding purposes. Have you discussed your intentions with one another?”


End file.
